Jamie Adams

Delete Facebook

Facebook is a monster of our own creation. We carried on feeding it
our deepest secrets until it became one of the most powerful and
valuable companies in the world, headed by a guy that once called his users ‘dumb fucks’.

The latest revelations are shocking, but I doubt they will cause it
any long term damage, people have short memories, most people just don’t
care, and no one will leave until all the other people they know do
too. Still, this is the first time that I can recall people seriously
talking about the end of Facebook. Some have asked what should replace
Facebook if it does fall, as if fleeing the platform would leave some
gaping hole in our lives that must be filled or that a new platform
would solve the problems of the old. The truth is that there is no hole,
because Facebook solves a problem that doesn’t exist. The Internet
worked just fine before it arrived, and it will work just fine when it
dies.

If you really must have a platform, choose one that’s federated.
Federated networks use open protocols to communicate with distributed
nodes. Admittedly this sounds ridiculously complicated (and that’s also a
barrier to adaption), but this network structure means that no single
entity has control of all the data. Projects like Mastodon are doing great work in getting federated social networks to a state ready for wider use.

Facebook has promised that it will safeguard the information that it
holds and that nothing like this will ever happen again, but none of
their lip flapping solves the basic problem: their sole purpose is to
maximise the profit that they can make from the information that we give
it. The only way to fix Facebook is to tell them to do one. Start
working on a blog. Dust off your email. Call a friend or send them a
text. The world without Facebook really isn’t that bad.